Introducing Our Podcast: This is Lincoln Center

The This is Lincoln Center podcast offers listeners intimate, enlightening moments with some of the great artistic talents of our time. Hosted by Live From Lincoln Center producer Kristy Geslain, This is Lincoln Center features the musicians, dancers, actors, creators, and thinkers who make the magic happen on Lincoln Center's famous stages.

Kristy Geslain: Hey, podcast listeners, greetings from Lincoln Center in New York City!

My name is Kristy Geslain and I'm a producer on Live From Lincoln Center. If you've never seen the show, I suggest you watch it immediately. It's been on the air for 42 years now on PBS and it features some of the incredible performances that happen on Lincoln Center stages.

There are a lot of really great parts to my job on the show: I get to see amazing performances and I get to be a part of delivering those performances to homes around the country.

But I think my favorite part of this gig is working with the artists. For years I've had the good fortune of interviewing some of the most exciting creative talents of our time. I've spoken with Renee Fleming and Audra McDonald and Danny Elfman and Sting and Joyce DiDonato, and the list goes on.

One frustrating part of all of this, though, is how much of these conversations end up on the cutting room floor—lots of anecdotes and insight and unexpected bits that we just couldn't use for one reason or another.

Like Andrew Rannells and his childhood admiration for British art rock...

Andrew Rannells: I weirdly loved Kate Bush. Which is kind of strange for, like, a little boy in the Midwest.

Or how Danny Elfman got his start...

Danny Elfman: That's how I learned to write music, was transcribing Duke Ellington pieces. And I didn't want to listen to anything after 1938.